In a competitive sales market, including insurance sales, independent organizations often field or service customer calls via a call center. The call center may be a unit within the organization or a separate business that the independent organization contracts with to receive customer calls, for example. In any case, the calls to the call centers are typically handled in the same manner: a customer calls the 800 or other designated service number, and a call center representative answers the phone, manually confirms the customer's identity, identifies the purpose of the call, helps the customer, as needed, and then ends the call.
There are several drawbacks to this known call center response method. For example, often a call center representative fails to initially answer the phone, either inadvertently or intentionally, leading to missed opportunities to assist an existing customer or a new customer. In addition, when calls are answered, they may be answered in the same manner, i.e., by a call center representative. The present embodiments may alleviate these and other drawbacks.